In the spring of 1597, the judicial machinery of Aberdeen turned its attention to Jannet Guisett, a resident of the city whose life intersected with the heightened anxieties of the Scottish Reformation. On the 4th of April, formal legal proceedings were initiated against her, recorded under case file C/EGD/2134. This period marked a peak in the intensity of witch-hunting across the northeast of Scotland, where local authorities, spurred by a combination of religious zeal and civic concerns, frequently brought individuals before the courts under the 1563 Witchcraft Act.
Following her initial summons, Jannet was processed through the established legal channels of the time, appearing in the court records under the trial reference T/JO/1505. While the specific indictments detailing her alleged actions remain brief in the surviving administrative archives, her case stands as a representative entry in the broader register of the Aberdeen trials. As an inhabitant of the city, Jannet was subject to the scrutiny of the local magistracy, who oversaw the legal apparatus designed to investigate those suspected of maleficium, reflecting the complex social and legal pressures exerted upon women in late sixteenth-century Scotland.